The video cassette recorder (VCR) has created desirable viewing options which are not available to the viewer of live television. When viewing pre-recorded programs, the viewer may pause the playback to answer the phone or to view a scene in "stop-action" mode, advance or rewind the recorded material to start the viewing to replay a scene or skip over annoying advertising. Digital recording techniques, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,963,995, may be used to store the recorded programming in a random access memory comprising the combination of a semiconductor RAM buffer and a disk memory, permitting a desired programming segment to be immediately accessed and viewed without the time consuming fast-forward and fast-reverse tape motion required in conventional video cassette recorders.